Why I Joined The Dispatch

Hi! I’m Esther. Declan and I show up in your inbox every weekday with The Morning Dispatch. 

A few weeks ago, I wrote an update on rising COVID-19 case counts, and Declan suggested we stick in a link to the government webpage where you can order eight more at-home tests. (It’s here, in case you missed it.) We did, and I didn’t think anything more about it until a few days later when my mom mentioned she’d clicked the link and ordered tests.

I’m a reporter because I want to help give readers the information they need to be better citizens, neighbors, and people. I want to seek the truth and speak it. It’s pretty neat when that means I end up helping my mom keep herself healthy.

But hey, I could link to COVID-19 tests at most any news outlet, and the Powers That Be have asked me to explain why I’m at this outlet, in this role. That’s pretty simple: The Dispatch is directly pushing back on the partisan spin and information firehose that have undermined trust and exhausted readers.